In The End
by PhantomWraith
Summary: Nothing mattered to him any more. Everything eventually died away or fell apart in the end. It was the power of Time and Death working hard to keep the cycle of life and death rotating. They didn't plan for him, however...


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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In the End

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Chapter One

_War tore the planet apart. War spawned a new breed of predator. War brought peace among the Five Kingdoms of Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, and Lightning. The Five Kingdoms created massive floating cities that orbited the planet, but not everyone could be save. Almost two-thirds of the world's population had been left on the surface to fend for themselves, but not because of money or arrogance. It was out of survival instinct. Those who got to the drop ships first were the ones that were given a second chance; the rest were left to deal with the nightmare on the surface._

Heavy armored boots thundered as their wearer charged through a wrecked corridor of a fallen Starmaster, its twisted carcass lying amongst the ruins of Paleo Iwa, the former home of the Earth Kingdom. Deep in the dark belly of the military cargo plane, the bellows and roars of the Kaimaro could be heard echoing all throughout its metallic corpse. The heavily armored man pushed himself farther, forcing his legs to move faster. He had no choice other than to run; to run as fast and as far as he could go. He was out of ammunition.

His breath fogged up the lower half of his visored helmet with every oxygen-deprived pant. His body burned with exhaustion and pain as he continued to run. Turning down the only bend in the corridor, he nearly cursed the heavens upon coming to a dead end. The three-dimensional map of the Starmaster- which glowed bright blue on the HUD of his visor- showed he was near an emergency access panel, but it was back where the hall turned. It was barely fifty feet from him, but the problem was the fact seven Warrior Kaimaro sat between him and his escape route.

_'Shit! I have less than twenty second to get out of here before everything goes up in flames!'_ He mentally cursed, having left a special fuel-air bomb meant to completely eradicate Kaimaro hives and this plane just so happened to be one. Albeit, a small one, but a hive never the less. His face went pale when he saw one of the Kaimaro slide a foot-wide metal disk towards him with three flashing white lights on it in a triangular form; it was the fuel-air bomb. Suddenly, the three rods under the lights rose up an inch or two as they began releasing large amounts of highly flammable gas. At the same time, the mechanical leviathans lunged for him.

If one were present a few seconds prior, they would have heard his cries moments before the Starmaster ruptured and a blossom of fire and debris lit up the night sky...

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Looking up at the dull glow on the horizon, Naruto dismissed it and turned back around, continuing his journey. His smooth pitch black hair fell past his shoulder blades, his crimson irises bore slit pupils as black as the night sky, and his skin was bronzed from constant sun exposure. His finger tips bore black three-inch long claws and his canine teeth were sharp fangs. Standing at 6'7" and built like a predator, he was highly intimidating and powerful. He was wearing a pair of baggy black and grey camouflage pants, a black sleeveless turtleneck, a black hooded trench coat, black and grey camouflage elbow-length gloves, and black armored knee-high combat boots.

He despised the surface with a passion. Every square inch of the planet's surface was nothing more than a charred barren wasteland. Some areas were covered in wreckage from old war planes and tanks that had been trashed during and after the last war. Others...

He shook his head, clearing away the haunting images that drifted through his mind. Unfortunately, it did nothing more than make them worse. He remembered the burning ruins of a surface-dweller settlement he once called home and the mutilated corpses of the populace. He had been there when the Kaimaro attacked. Everyone was slaughtered and devoured by the carnivorous abominations in less than an hour.

That had been when he was barely thirteen years old and since then, Naruto had made it his eternal goal to eliminate any and all threats to his people; be they surface-dwellers or citizens of the Five Kingdoms. However, they were no longer his people and all because of a technicality. Naruto's mother, Kushina, had been the last of House Maelstrom, a clan of Wolven. Wolven, while often mistaken for werewolves, were artificially created by a warmonger scientist bent on world domination, but he was killed by his own creation before his plan could even come to fruition.

His eyes grew grim with sorrow as he reached under his shirt and pulled out a necklace with a blood ruby hexagonal crystal as long as his pinky finger with veins of raw gold metals twisting all throughout it. It was his mother's, the last heirloom of his family's once-royal bloodline. House Maelstrom was the co-founder of Paleo Konoha over a thousand years ago and were the mainstay of Paleo Konoha's military forces up until the day the Kaimaro appeared. As the years had passed, they had grown lax, believing they no longer had to fight in the wars. Because of that, they were wiped out within the first eight months of the blood feud.

It was ironic, really. The Wolven, his people, were honestly cousins of the Kaimaro. Kaimaro were simply the mechanical versions of Wolven. Naruto could be considered a hybrid of both Wolven and Kaimaro because of a special power he had that only Kaimaro have been known to use; Hyperlink. It gave them the ability to hack and link with any nearby computer or machinery along with technopathic powers, allowing them to create weapons and machines out of scrap metal and old parts. It also let them know exactly where each other was and communicate from far away.

"Well, well, well...What do we have here?" Taunted the leader of a group of bandits. Naruto didn't bother seeing what they looked like or how many there were because it simply didn't matter. Before any of them could draw their guns or brandish their weapons, Kaimaro lunged out from beneath the ground behind each of them, snapping their necks and mauling their bodies as Naruto watched it with cold, careless eyes. They were worthless husks of blood and meat that were devoured within minutes.

Without warning, another Kaimaro burst through the ground in front of him, but didn't attack him. Blankly staring at each other, neither moved to attack. Neither moved at all. That is, until Naruto put his fist through the machine's head before activating his Hyperlink ability and hacking each of the Kaimaro around him, turning them on each other within moments. It was their strength and their weakness. Being of a hive mentality, Kaimaro were weak against Hyperlink and could easily be forced to turn on one another.

"Pathetic heaps of scrap." Naruto grumbled as he stepped on the head of a dying Kaimaro and crushed its metallic skull under his booted foot. They were simply a hunting party and more would no doubt come to find out what happened to their fellow Kaimaro. It didn't matter. They'll die like the others, in the end. Continuing on his travels, Naruto passed the time by creating pointless and harmless little spider-like robots with his technopathic powers, idly watching as they scurried about and searched under rocks and rubble all about him while remaining close to him…


End file.
